Pulp cinema film festival Noir City is back for its 12th year, taking over the Castro Theatre January 24 through February 2. This year, they’re doing things a bit differently and offering an international slate of classic noir films, dispelling the common theory that the often detective-themed genre was as all American as baseball. Instead, it’s a genre that reverberated throughout the world as proven through this year’s selections from such masters as Japan’s Akira Kurosawa, France’s king-of-cool Jean-Pierre Melville, and in Jule Dassin’s French masterpiece Rififi.

Split up into nights of double and triple features, and grouped mostly by country, things kick off with a Joseph Cotton double feature including Carol Reed’s masterpiece The Third Man. Not only is it a high watermark for the genre, but it’s considered one of the greatest film’s ever made. Other highlights include the aforementioned Kurosawa double feature, the underrated and underseen Two Men in Manhattan from Jean-Pierre Melville, and another British noir classic in Brighton Rock.